1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a support system for recycling glass material.
2. Related Art
Recently, in view of environmental preservation, in a recycling based society, a demand to use resources for effectively reducing waste has increased. The recycling may be applied to glass material, such as a window of an automobile or a window of a building or structure. It is possible to reuse discarded glass material (hereinafter, referred to as waste glass) that can no longer be used as a glass product for a window of an automobile or the like by remelting the discarded glass. However, most conventional waste glass is generally disposed as industrial waste; therefore the glass is scarcely recycled to become new glass raw material.
In order to prevent waste glass from being disposed as industrial waste, a technique in which waste glass incapable of being reused as glass raw materials is recycled into a material for public works is disclosed (see JP-A-2004-035351)
The reason why conventional waste glass is not generally recycled into new glass raw material is that glass does not characteristically recycle efficiently.
In general, glass includes silicon oxide, which is a main raw material, aluminum oxide, potassium oxide, calcium oxide, magnesium oxide, etc. Glass is graded based on its composition. For example, different types of glass having different functions, such as UV cut glass, and IR cut glass can be obtained by changing the composition.
When each component melts to form glass, it is difficult to extract each component from the glass. Therefore, when waste glass is used as a part of new glass raw material, it is impossible not to use a granular material so-called cullet that is obtained by pulverizing waste glass. In order to maintain the same high quality of glass, the composition of cullet should be compatible to that of the glass to be manufactured. The compatibility is especially important when a glass product, such as a window of an automobile which requires high quality control, is manufactured. For this reason, it is necessary to properly classify or separate waste glass according to its type in order to reuse waste glass as a part of the new glass raw material.
Even though each glass has similar transparency and color, each composition is not always compatible with each other; therefore, the composition of glass cannot be determined by appearance. For this reason, when various types of waste glass are collected, they cannot be properly classified or separated. Therefore, waste glass has been disposed as industrial waste.
For example, a front window of an automobile uses laminated glass in which a flexible and strong interlayer film is interposed between two sheets of flat glass. Even though the interlayer film used in the laminated glass is a material that can be reused as glass, the composition of the interlayer film cannot be determined by appearance as well as the composition of the glass; therefore, the interlayer film is disposed along with the glass.